


fearing a man in the dust of the moon

by thesilverwitch



Series: comet observatory medley [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Drunk confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 03:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4506447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverwitch/pseuds/thesilverwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a German man, Toni is rather horrible at holding his alcohol. He starts off alright, as most people do. His personality—so tightly packed and confident—doesn’t lead to a lot of slips in his behavior. He is a controlled person, measured and balanced. A tipsy Toni is not too unlike a sober Toni.</p><p>At a certain point, however, usually after the third or fourth drink, Toni goes from tipsy to proper smashed. It’s always a quick transition, which means Isco rarely ever gets to prepare for it. One second, they’re talking as teammates do. Jokes are tossed around like Andy Cole’s career and Isco’s telling Dani about how freeing it is to have a buzzcut while Toni listens attentively. Next thing he knows, Toni is gone, off to dance with Sergio and Marcelo, and by the time Isco finds him—not five minutes later—Toni’s eyes have a new glassy shine, his smile is too wide and the pastel pink sheen covering his cheeks has travelled to the rest of his face, as if his whole head is one big stoplight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fearing a man in the dust of the moon

For a German man, Toni is rather horrible at holding his alcohol. He starts off alright, as most people do. His personality—so tightly packed and confident—doesn’t lead to a lot of slips in his behavior. He is a controlled person, measured and balanced. A tipsy Toni is not too unlike a sober Toni.

At a certain point, however, usually after the third or fourth drink, Toni goes from tipsy to proper smashed. It’s always a quick transition, which means Isco rarely ever gets to prepare for it. One second, they’re talking as teammates do. Jokes are tossed around like Andy Cole’s career and Isco’s telling Dani about how freeing it is to have a buzzcut while Toni listens attentively. Next thing he knows, Toni is gone, off to dance with Sergio and Marcelo, and by the time Isco finds him—not five minutes later—Toni’s eyes have a new glassy shine, his smile is too wide and the pastel pink sheen covering his cheeks has travelled to the rest of his face, as if his whole head is one big stoplight.

"How do you always do this?” Isco asks. He doesn't expect an answer, which is just as well since Toni doesn’t bother giving him one. Whether he’s no longer capable of understanding Spanish or if he simply doesn’t care to answer is another question altogether, one that Isco isn't going to ask at this point and time, for his sake as much as Toni's.

“Isco,” Toni replies in a dragged slur. He leans against the man in question, casting an arm across Isco’s shoulders and pulling their muscled bodies together, side to side. Toni smells of alcohol and a light cologne, the kind that’s heavily priced for its pure simplicity. It’s very him. Very clean. Very… Toni-like.

There is a chance Isco is a bit drunk as well.

"Hey, if it isn’t Isco Disco in a disco! This is your night, magia,” Sergio proclaims, grinning as if he’s just said something incredibly witty.

Isco shakes his head. “Hadn't heard that one before.”

Sergio’s grin goes even wider, stretching the corners of his mouth upwards and sideways, towards infinity and beyond. Sergio’s smiles are always big, the kind that can wrap you in a warm blanket when you’re feeling down and instantly lift your spirits. If you think about it, it makes sense that a man with such a big heart would have such a big smile. 

“Isco Disco,” Toni repeats, speaking right into Isco’s left ear. His words are wet and sloppy and his weight, which he had previously been carrying on his own, is now weighing on Isco’s shoulders more so than it is on Toni’s legs.

“Alright there?” Isco asks.

“Ja. Es geht mir sehr gut,” Toni replies.

Isco tries to rolls his eyes and discovers that the motion sets off a wave of nausea that goes through his body like its made of paper. A second is required to steady himself before he goes back to staring at a point behind Toni’s head, where he won’t be distracted by Toni’s face.

"I don’t speak german,” he eventually replies.

Toni’s reply takes a few seconds to be formed. Isco can see the wheels moving inside that perfect skull covered in blonde hair. He hears their grind and click as Toni translates Isco’s words, from Spanish to German and then back again, with some English thrown in the mix for good measure. It's a struggle all of them understand well. If speaking a second language when you’re drunk is already difficult, speaking a third one must be ‘Mission Impossible’ worthy.

“I will— Yo—“ Toni pauses. He forms a couple of words with his tongue, his mouth moving soundlessly, before he sighs and says, "Ich werde dich lehren.”

Isco stares at Toni’s so very blue eyes and shrugs. "Whatever you say.”

“Toni, Toni. We’ve talked about this. You’ve got to speak Spanish, compadre. You’re in Spain. Well, not right now. Right now you’re in China, but most of the time you’re in Spain. Or at least speak in English! In German it’s no good because the only one who can speak German is Dani, and we all know he only knows curses words so it’s not like he can translate anything you say unless you’ve been secretly cursing at us all this time, in which case we have a serious problem in our hands because that’s no good, Toni. Absolutely no good.”

Sergio’s words slip out of his mouth rapid fast with no space between them. They trip and run into each other, joining together in a complicated slur. Isco only has to glance at Toni to know the other man didn’t understand a word of it. Isco wouldn’t have either were he not so accustomed to Sergio’s drunk ramblings.

"I think we should go,” he says. "We’ve both had too much to drink.”

Sergio nods. He holds up his drink and takes a sip, indicating that he, himself, is not quite done for the night. If Iker were still around he’d take the drink out of his hand say something like “don’t push it, Nene,” or  "you’ll regret it in the morning.”

Iker is not around, though, and Isco is too young to play the paternal role for a man five years his senior. It will be fine, though. Someone else will intervene soon. Marcelo or Pepe. Someone who is better at this than Isco and doesn’t have a drunken german trying to suck a hickey onto their neck.

"Can you wait?” Isco asks. Toni dislodges his mouth from Isco’s skin with a loud and kind of gross ‘pop’ noise.

"Can _you_?” he asks. Despite knowing the risk, Isco cannot resist rolling his eyes.

Of all the available people in the world to fall in love with and he had to go with the smart-ass who can’t hold his liquor.

And isn’t that a lovely word. Love. Love and Toni mixed in the same sentence is a new concept, but not an unpleasant one. Mostly it’s just scary.

Someone from the management staff who speaks fluent Chinese finds them a ride back to the team hotel after they make their way to the entrance of the bar. While in the cab, they sit at a respectable distance from one another, with the tip of their pinkies meeting in the middle seat. Toni has his eyes closed and a mindless smile playing on his lips. Isco spends most of the ride staring at him.

“Did you know when I was a kid,” Isco starts to say, words tumbling from his mouth practically of their own accord. They’re back at the hotel now, in Isco’s room. They only have one light turned on because Isco can’t for the life of him figure out how the stupid lights work. He's feeling a little sick from the cab ride and Toni is of no help, too busy hopping like a rabbit as he tries to take off his shoes. "I didn’t picture this. I dreamed about my future all the time, but I didn’t dream this.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Isco knows it instantaneously. Toni’s reaction says it all. Toni is about to fall on his ass, his method of hopping from side to side to keep his balance failing him, when he freezes still on one leg and Isco knows—he just _knows_ —he’s fucked up. Toni slowly puts down his foot, having given up on trying to take off his clothes. He doesn’t seem too drunk now. The ride must have had a sobering effect on him while making Isco drunker.

"Oh?” he says or maybe asks. Isco can’t tell. 

“Yes. I mean, I used to dream about my future all the time, you know? But in my dreams it was all football and trophies. Playing for Spain and winning the champions league. I never really thought about dating or— or—“

"Or being with another man?” Toni finishes for him. He doesn’t sound upset or angry, but detached, like he’s not there emotionally, kind of like he did when he first joined Real Madrid.

Isco stares at him, trying to make Toni understand what he means by the force of his gaze alone, but he can’t and he can’t because Toni’s right, isn’t he?

Isco had never dreamed about this. He’d dream about his career, of playing football until he met his timely end and weight of the sun and Spain on his back. He hadn’t dream of falling in love with a man. 

He would have if he’d know it sooner. Glancing at Toni and the solid image of his body, the solid line of his jawbone and the curve of his abs, Isco knows that there’s nothing else. There’s never been anything else. If he didn’t realize it sooner, it’s because this was unthinkable back then, and in a way, is still unthinkable now. Their teammates might accept them, but they can’t predict what will happen if anyone outside the team finds out about them.

It’s something they haven’t talked about. Not yet at least.

“Did you?” Isco asks, side-stepping the question. Toni shrugs. He doesn’t meet Isco’s eyes.

“There are things you just know,” he admits.

They stare at each other for a few seconds, before Toni looks down at his hands. “I should go,” he says.

“No, no. Wait. Don’t go. Please. I’m being stupid. I’m drunk. I’m being stupid and drunk.”

Isco takes a step forward and Toni takes a step to the side.

“Being drunk doesn’t make you say things you don’t mean, Isco,” Toni tells him. His voice is a low murmur and Isco has to strain his ears to hear him properly. He takes another step towards Toni.

“I haven’t said anything. Just that I didn’t know. It’s okay to not know.”

Toni smiles at him, but it’s not the smile Isco likes to see. This is a sad smile, small and focused and chastised, as if it’s unsure of its own existence. Isco likes Toni’s genuine smiles, the kind that make him look like the nerd he secretly is.

“It is okay to not know,” Toni agrees. “I’m just wondering why you brought this up now.”

“Because,” Isco begins to say, then stops as he realizes the words forming in the back of his throat are heavy ones, the kind that he won’t be able to take back after he’s said them.

Toni sighs. “I really should go. Dani will be back soon and you need to sleep.”

“It’s fine. I already told him he couldn’t sleep here tonight.”

Toni’s smile gains some of its familiar shine. “You really have to stop kicking him out for my sake. He’s going to grow a grudge against us.”

“He’s a heavy sleeper. He can sleep anywhere. Also, you can’t go because you don’t have your key. I took it from you and gave it to him earlier at the club,” Isco confesses.

Toni gives him a not so happy look. “You have got to stop pickpocketing me.”

“It was not pickpocketing,” he corrects. “It was thinking ahead.”

“You are a liar and a thief, Mr. Alarcón,” Toni replies. He then sits on Isco’s bed by leaning back until his body hits the mattress and collapses on it.

“I’m not,” Isco says. Toni waves him off and they stay in silence for a while.

This could be the end of the conversation, and if Isco were smarter and sober it would be. However, he’s not smarter, and he’s certainly not sober, which means that the second he’s given a moment to think, his mind goes back to what he was about to say earlier.

He tries to hold back the words, but by now they’re far too big to be contained like the dinosaur in that last Jurassic Park movie. With a force and weight entirely of their own, they slip from Isco’s mouth and move across the room until they reach Toni’s ears.

“I didn’t dream about being with a man when I was a teenager because I didn’t know, back then. Or maybe I did know and I just ignored it because that was easier than admitting I wasn’t who I thought I was. But if I had dreamed—if I had pictured having what we have now—it wouldn’t have been a bad dream. At all.”

“No?” Toni asks, sitting up on the bed. Isco closes the space between them with three swift steps. He moves into the space between Toni’s legs and holds onto the back of Toni’s neck.

“It would have been scary. It would have been terrifying, actually, but not bad because this is not bad. This is the opposite of bad.”

Toni laughs. “Well, that’s certainly a relief to hear. I wouldn’t know what to do if the man I’ve been dating for the past five months suddenly told me he thinks our relationship is _bad_.”

Isco groans, closing his eyes. “How did we go from you being drunk and sloppy all over me to me making drunk confessions at you?”

“You started it.”

“That I did,” Isco says as he peers down at Toni.

“What I’m trying to say—what I’ve been _trying_ to say—is that you are a big part of my life nowadays and it’s weird to think of how I didn’t see it coming. That’s all.”

“Well, I’m glad I’m a big part of your life,” Toni tells him.

“Good. I’m glad, too,”  Isco says, leaning down to press a cherry-pink kiss on Toni’s mouth.  He continues to lean his weight onto Toni until they’re lying in the bed and he can use Toni’s body as a pillow.

They stay like that for a long time, until Toni pushes him off and says they can’t sleep with their shoes on. Isco strips until he’s down to his boxers, then pulls the covers off both their beds and rearranges them until they cover both of them.

“Did you know,” he starts to say. Toni groans.

“Please tell me this isn’t another twenty-minute drunk confession.”

Isco laughs and puts his hand over Toni’s mouth to shut up. “This was going to be another drunk confession, but I guess it can wait until tomorrow.”

“No, no, come on -- you have to tell me now,” Toni says against Isco’s hand. Gross.

“I was just going to say that I only realized I was into men when I was twenty. That’s a bit late in life, isn’t it?”

Toni's reply is immediate. “ _Nah._ Like you said, it’s okay to not know.”

Isco looks at Toni’s silhouette, the only part of him that’s visible in the low-light of the hotel room. “Yeah, but it’s better to know.”

Toni kisses him. “Fair enough,” he says. Isco can feel Toni’s smile against his cheek. It’s his real smile. The one that makes him look like a nerd. Isco loves it.


End file.
